The Divorce follows stay at home Naomi who is floored when her husband Jeremy tells her that he wants out of their marriage and wants a divorce. She’s convinced he’s being manipulated by someone to think that he’s not happy (yeah you read that right) and when she realizes that her husband now has a girlfriend called Veronica, she’s determined to find out whatever she can about her to get her out of their lives.
At this point if you have read one Freida McFadden you know how it goes. This one isn’t one of her best I have to say. Probably because there were too many convoluted things being tossed about that didn’t even make sense. I think I loved The Housemaid series (well except for the last few) because it at least was set up in the realm of reality and we get some fun twists. Now it seems McFadden writes for the twists, and not for the overall plot and certainly not for the development of her characters. I absolutely loved her choose your own adventure book she just put out because she embraced the silliness of the thriller/mystery genre books that are being written these days. And I think the last one of her books I read, The Tenant was really good because for once we had a male character as the main character and the book actually didn’t seem to be just written for the twists/reveals. This book irked me so badly because Naomi was just obtuse to the point of painfulness about the fact that Jeremy loves her and is being manipulated. There’s of course a twist (always) and then we get another POV that I won’t reveal, but that made the entire book worse in my opinion. McFadden has gone full Lifetime movies for women, but the bad ones. We are not getting the campy insanity of Mother, May I Sleep With Danger, instead we are getting that weird one where the woman finds out her husband is the devil. Or was going to be the host for him? Yes, I refuse to look up the title.
The ending with the multiple twists was just ridiculous. I get that McFadden doesn’t want to write something that readers can instantly guess, but at this point, we all know to just guess the least likely person is the bad guy and that person we never think about really while reading has probably done some terrible stuff too.
